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Elvis Costello transcended musical boundaries in his concert at the Tower Theater last Friday night. Playing to a packed house, Costello put tremendous amount of energy into an hour and 15 minute performance.
Placing the emphasis clearly on the music, Costello opened with a 12 minute set of four songs before saying a word to the audience. Most of his communication with the audience consisted for very short intros to the songs he was playing; occasionally he would say something like "There's a lot of groups around today that are making a lot of noise; that's not where it's at."
Costello wants his audience to listen to his words and experience the emotions that the words are describing. To that end, he has developed an incredible array of hand gestures and body movements that help to emphasize the anguish, disgust and other strong emotions that he is describing and experiencing. He seldom played his guitar like he does on his album; instead he let his excellent keyboard player fill in on a lot of the guitar riffs. Perhaps the most drastic measure that he took to immerse his audience in his words and feelings was when he actually placed his guitar down on the stage and stared at the audience for 20 or 30 seconds, while the rest of the group dropped the volume to almost nothing.
By the end of the concert, Costello had the audience in the palm of his hand. After the first encore, a very upbeat "Miracle Man," he left the stage and the lights went on, but no one left. People stood in their seats and cheered for nearly 10 minutes, until he came back out on stage for a draining version of "I'm Not Angry," which had the audience chanting "angry" on the chorus.
Costello offers no answers, messages or world view to his audience. Instead, he comes out on stage dressed like a Fuller Brush man playing music that has influences from just about anybody that one can think of from the past 25 years. None of it — his outfit or the music — really matters; they are just a vehicle for the words and the emotions. He acts out his emotions in front of the audience in a very real way. He wants them to feel it too, and go out and do something about it. He is successful because his emotions are interesting and worth understanding.
Costello is New Wave only by association in time. What he is doing transcends that label and is real and lasting.
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